1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a software program providing a user interface for management of a user's interaction with other software programs.
2. Related Art
There are many businesses or fields of endeavor, which rely on the use of plural desktop computer applications. One such field is the modem practice of medicine. In such a setting, users quite often find themselves entering and reentering similar information over and over. For example, a single user may have to repeat login information in plural applications, followed by the same or similar client information. Such information, that defines the environment in which each application operates is known as context. That is, context is a collection of data items and corresponding values, wherein the items represent information required in common between plural applications in an industry or business setting. For example, in health care, a patient identifier (patient ID) is an item which is part of the context in which plural clinical applications may participate, or share.
In the modem practice of medicine, a physician or other professional or staff member may need to store, retrieve, analyze, etc. various types of patient data. The patient data to be processed may be clinical; e.g. x-ray images or blood work results, or may be financial, e.g. insurance cover and billing history. Thus, clinical applications, such as those to store, retrieve and display x-ray images and those to store, retrieve and display blood work results have inputs and outputs which fall into two broad classes: highly specialized, work product specific I/O; and more general, context-related I/O.
The desirability of managing context information, so that a user at a workstation need not reenter information such as user identification (user ID) or patient identification (patient ID) has long been recognized.
A standard known as Health Level Seven Context Management Specification Version CM-1.1 was promulgated by the Health Level Seven (HL7) Clinical Context Object Workgroup (CCOW) on Nov. 6, 1999, incorporated herein in its entirety by reference, to define an interface and other architectural definitions of a Context Management Architecture (CMA), whereby clinical applications interact with a Context Manager to manage context information across a range of clinical and other health care related applications.
At this time, there are no other known, comprehensive context management software packages available. Some small steps have been taken for example to share context amongst one publisher's own titles, using proprietary methods absent a context manager, or to permit a user to sign onto a single application which transfers user context to plural other applications. However, no context manager handling both user and patient context is known, much less a complete system with central administration of the context management process.
Conventionally, context management of context enabled applications is a distributed process. Context enabled software, compliant with industry standards, transfer changes in context automatically from one to another. For example, in the healthcare industry, a single workstation may be executing several clinical applications at once. If those applications are context enabled, then when a user changes context information, such as the patient identification in one application, then that context information is transferred by the context management system to the other clinical applications, as explained above. However, conventional context management software is not directly accessed by users. Rather, users make entries and changes through the managed applications. Changes to context information made in context-enabled applications are then transferred automatically by the context management software to other context-enabled applications.
Oversight of context management software can be performed by a context administrator software program. Such a program brings certain administrative functions under centralized control. However, information services personnel usually administer and maintain these systems. Thus, context administration does not fundamentally change the way in which users interact with context-enabled software. Context administration can oversee such functions as which context-enabled applications on a particular workstation are part of a common context and which are not.
Many of the concepts employed in conventional context management and context administration systems are described in U.S. Provisional Patent Applications Ser. Nos. 60/128,145, 60/135,907, 60/136,670, 60/139,235, 60/146,722 and 60/145,681, all incorporated herein by reference. Some of these concepts are further described in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/545,396 and 09/583,301, also incorporated herein by reference.
One area which has conventionally been problematic in this field of art has been that of user interfaces. Conventionally, there has been no uniform approach to launching, using and context managing plural applications from the standpoint of individual users.